


Waffles, At the End

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Healing, Hypothetical Post-Canon, Post-Canon, Waffles, well...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 07:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18256967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: The Umbrella Academy goes for waffles, all together again.





	Waffles, At the End

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I hope you enjoy this if you read it!!! :D
> 
> \- I’m pretty dang sure something like this must’ve been done before, with the waffles… Sorry!  
> \- This was fun to write, but also it came out kinda short.  
> \- Have a great day~

Back when everything was just starting, again — when the world was swaying up to the edge of an apocalypse like waving bemusedly over the edge of a cliff — Klaus Hargreeves had asked his brother Diego to go get waffles with him.  He’d been high at the time, and his voice had been wavery and rambling; Diego had been spinning a dead man’s monocle around in his fingers under the light of a patient, exhausted moon.  They didn’t go get waffles for a long, long time.  By the time they finally made it, they went as a family…  All of the Umbrella Academy shuffling up to some sticky plastic booths and tracking varying amounts of mud onto the waffle place’s chessboard floor.

By then, so much had changed.  Klaus and Diego and all the others were blinking around at their old lives like they’d just run into an old friend on the street and were trying to remember their name.

Luther, once the team’s assigned leader, held the door for everyone when they got to the restaurant.  It wasn’t because anyone expected him to, not anymore.  He glanced up at that moon where he’d lived for so many years and felt his lip twist up just a little, little bit.  A slow smile, remembering how simple things had been.  Like the difference between looking frantically all around and sitting in the cold with his eyes closed.  The moon was faded and wispy-looking now, like it could barely be solid enough to hold him or anyone at all.

Luther held the door, and Allison squeezed his arm gently as she strode inside.

Luther and Diego, Allison and Klaus, Five and...  And _Ben_ , even, who was still technically dead but also just about as tangible as anyone living could expect to be.  He was going to eat waffles too, somehow — he only flickered watery blue in the light every now and then, like if Klaus got the flu or somebody managed to really, really surprise him.

And also... Right in the middle of everyone, impossibly...  There was Vanya.  Vanya with her eyes bleached pale and unearthly, still, and her violin case tapping against her leg as she walked.  Vanya has become the White Violin and nearly ended their earth; Vanya was chatting with Five, now, who had his hands in his pockets and was swaggering around like he owned the waffle joint.  Five would ask for melted marshmallow stuff on his food, almost definitely.  He was chuckling at something Vanya had said, and she looked so pleased with herself.

It was sometimes funny to remember how they used to think maybe they’d never reach Vanya at all.  Never heal what was warped and ruinous between them.  Vanya and Allison had inside jokes, now, that might’ve seemed impossible once.  She and Klaus were wearing matching shoes they’d picked up during some strange adventure in the 20s – in the 20s, but also not too long ago.  Vanya’s emotions made the dying flowers on their table shiver to life again, uncurling their bruised petals like a hello.  A power more than violence, more than the bitter want she had let soak into her just like that smothering medicine.

Allison’s daughter Claire would be flying in with a mysterious nanny-person, soon enough — she and Luther were going to pick them up at the airport.  They had a couple gifts from throughout time waiting in the trunk of Allison’s car, and Luther had memorized a list of Nice to Meet You-style conversation starters just in case he needed to lighten the mood or Allison had to take one of her ex’s phone calls.  Klaus’s still halfway-insubstantial and long-dead boyfriend was back at the apartment they shared with Ben, just then, still reading up on all the history he’d missed with huge, baffled eyes.  They would head back to pick him up in barely any time at all.  But for now: waffles.

Five decreed the waffle establishment’s coffee just barely, barely passable — Luther might have been uncomfortable sitting partway in the aisle on a separate chair, his huge mostly-human shoulders bent over to keep out of the waitstaff’s path a little better, except that Diego had pulled over a seat and was sitting with him. There was a new understanding between them, now, sharing a menu because the extra in the center of the table had an impressive puddle of blueberry syrup oozing relentlessly across it.

The air smelled sugary, full of grease and sour perfume — the city outside was moving peacefully, obliviously on, and Klaus’s eyes were bright and sober as polished coins.  He hadn’t _completely_ believed they would end up here, eventually.  He hadn’t completely believed they would fall together all over again.  It had been a long shot, that original request for a brotherly bonding waffle-trip, way back when.  But then...  So much of everything the Umbrella Academy was had always been a long shot.  People born on opposite sides of the planet, thrown together by chance and a dead man’s will, raised as school uniform vigilantes. A long shot, right?

There was soft, crackly music playing from back in the kitchen; the Umbrella Academy ordered all sorts of things the dead man with a monocle wouldn’t have approved of.

Good morning, everybody.  Good morning, again.


End file.
